Geri Stengel's blog

Last month, 100 industry leaders from various sectors made a commitment to give more than money to nonprofits. They promised to give their time and expertise. They promised to serve on a nonprofit board for at least one full year.

Who knew? “Green” stamps are no longer the pre-historic version of “reward points.” Does anyone out there remember licking those endless little stamps and pasting them into that little book?

No matter. That’s so yesterday. Today the US Postal Service has another kind of “green” stamps, a page of 16 stamps, each with an idea for reducing your environmental impact. These are “forever” stamps, too, which means they are evergreen as well: You can use them even after the next rate hike.

Whatever the goal of your nonprofit – raising awareness of your organization’s mission, generating funds and letters to public officials or finding board members – social media can help. But you need to use the right social medium for each purpose. And you need to use it correctly.

Some people know what matters. And, I’m happy to say, there are a lot of them. The Unreasonable Institute just announced the top social enterprises competing for funding by the Institute and noted that there were so many good applicants that the process of whittling them down had been arduous.

A group of retired and semi-retired professional women – lawyers, teachers, corporate execs, etc. – was inspired to do something concrete and useful to better the status of women. After much research, they were surprised to learn that sex trafficking is alive and rampant in their home city, New York. Reducing that become their focus, with ideas ranging from advocacy to picketing publications that thrive on sex ads. They were rarin’ to go.

With the Social Impact Exchange Conference coming soon, I want to keep the focus on scaling well rather than just getting bigger. As I wrote before, the micro-credit industry provides examples of the good and the bad of growth and private-sector investment in nonprofits as well as a fine example of sharing lessons learned.

A rolling, self-imposed brown-out, called Earth Hour – between 8:30 and 9:30 your time on March 26 – is meant to remind us all that we are the future of the environment … and the future is now. Don’t just turn off your lights and sit in the dark for an hour. Think! Then post your ongoing commitment to the Earth at Beyond the Hour.